This is What Sexual Assault Feels Like

Originally published on Medium.com

Trigger Warning

Recently, Texas Governor Greg Abbott was asked about the reality that many rape victims may have to face thanks to the new abortion law enacted in the state that restricts all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy (which as AOC pointed out is only two weeks late on your period, AKA a total referendum on abortion). He responded to this inquiry by saying that the state will work to remove all rapists from the streets, as rape is a serious violent crime that the state doesn’t condone.

While this sentiment might sound good to the layperson, it’s very apparent to anyone that understands anything about sexual assault that this language is filled with the mythologies about rape that continue to pervade our culture.

Most sexual assault happens between two people who know each other. Often, these are family members, friends, acquaintances, and intimate partners. Not sex-crazed strangers who are roaming the streets, looking for victims to violate. These are your husbands, fathers, cousins, brothers. These are men you know, men you love.

By speaking about rapists in this tone, it is clear Governor Abbot doesn’t know this simple fact about rape.

Not only this, but sexual assault is also the most underreported violent crime in the country. Victims often do not come forward out of shame, guilt, denial, fear of retribution, or worst of all, fear of not being believed.

When survivors do come forward, police are often perpetrators of victim-blaming. Even for officers who receive special training on sexual violence, there is no significant difference in rape myth acceptance or their treatment of survivors. Not to mention how re-traumatizing it can be to go through the legal process.

There’s also the issue of probable cause. Rape and sexual assault can be extremely hard crimes to prosecute, as they are often based entirely on circumstantial evidence. Even with physical evidence, the two sides often have differing stories of what happened which leaves cases in a deadlock that isn’t anywhere close to being beyond a reasonable doubt.

All of this creates a set of circumstances in which sexual violence is highly stigmatized, misunderstood, and seldom brought to justice. Many refer to this as rape culture.

I am not here to debate the merits of rape culture, however. I am here to discuss how unnerving Governor Abbott's dismissal of victims is, considering my own assault last week.

I showed up to my date last Thursday with Jack (not his real name) at a cozy bar in Sutton Place, not expecting much. He showed up 15 minutes late, which annoyed me considering we were a stone's throw away from his apartment in the Upper East Side.

We sat at the bar and each ordered a drink; him whiskey and me an innocent-naming cocktail called The Bee Sting, which offered tequila laced with honey, lemon, and jalapeño. We started to casually talk and get to know each other, as he asked me about my day.

I felt shame rise in my chest as I described going on an interview for a position as a barista, explaining my lack of employment due to my poor mental health and consequential pursuit of intensive therapy. I didn’t know how to not lay it on thick and figured I’d rather someone reject me for my truth than like me for a lie.

He was understanding enough and I was eager to turn the conversation to him. He had just moved to the city and gotten his furniture delivered that afternoon, which had actually caused us to move our date spot to a bar by his apartment, rather than a locale closer to me. Jack also described the job he moved to NYC for, at Mt. Sinai. He was basically a tech nerd who had a job using supercomputers to engage in various coding tasks for the hospital.

Next, I gave him the third degree about his relationship history. He told me he’d been single for four years (the same as myself) but that he dated a little here and there in that timeframe. Jack told me the story of a sex educator he’d gone out with for a few months with who he never actually had sex with.

From the sounds of it, he seemed fairly shy and reserved, like someone who was open to love but not looking for it. Although, I could sense his commitment phobia and lack of ability to really connect with someone on a deeper level, as most of his past relationships seemed to stay on the surface. His disposition was friendly and jovial overall, which caused me to let my guard down.

As we finished our second round, he moved his chair to be closer to me. His arm soon went around my waist as he pulled me close, as he commented on its small size. At first, I was surprised at his forwardness, but soon found myself enamored with flattery.

We were soon kissing, his lips soft and his touch gentle. We continued to drink as the affection turned increasingly intimate in tandem with my BAC.

Soon, I was so drunk I could barely stand straight.

I had no intention of having a drunk hookup that night, but here we were, closing out the bar. “I’m definitely not going home on the subway in this condition,” I laughed. I had to convince him to call a car instead of taking the train back to his place (what about “I am in no condition to go on the subway” did he not understand?), since he was fairly sloshed, too.

The driver asked how we were doing when we got into our Lyft. “Drunk,” I laughed, to which the driver returned a knowing smile. “Not a bad thing,” he chuckled as we settled into the backseat.

When we got to his apartment, I was struck by just how many boxes of stuff he had. We quickly made our way into his bedroom, which I was shocked to find had a mattress with no sheets on it. “This is the aforementioned super-comfortable bed I have,” he gestured as he laid on it.

He had asked to meet closer to his place so that he had time to “unpack,” but he clearly hadn’t touched a thing. As I said, he didn’t even bother to put sheets on his mattress.

I sat down to test its comfort. It was comfortable enough; I didn’t see why he paid so much to have it shipped when he could have probably gotten an even more comfortable mattress for the same price in the city.

“Oh, and if I fall asleep and you want to have sex or suck me off, you’re welcome to. I’m giving you full permission.” He was 100% serious and I found this to be not only strange but a red flag. I would never dream of having sex with someone in their sleep, which I told him, but should have probably taken it as a sign of things to come.

He soon turned all of the lights off and we were kissing feverishly. Clothes came off, Hands were everywhere.

I told him I enjoyed being fingered. He obliged and stuck two inside of me. “Wow, you are wet!” He giggled in delight.

“Told you,” I had disclosed that I naturally have a healthy amount of vaginal secretions, but he seemed to be connecting the amount of secretion I had to my longing for him. I didn’t argue, but I also didn’t placate his gloating.

“Have you ever been fisted?”

He asked. I was taken aback by this question but told him that I hadn’t. I honestly couldn’t remember but it didn’t really matter either way. I gave him the permission I knew he would ask for to do this and was immediately felt a stinging heat radiating from my pelvis. It was definitely uncomfortable, but I decided to just ride the wave, giving an obligatory moan here and there.

Betraying myself for another’s pleasure is something I have grown incredibly accustomed to in my sex life. Because of early experiences of sexual abuse, I default to appeasement.

At some point in the midst of the fisting, kissing, and touching, I felt his fingers slide into my ass.

I was very uncomfortable with this, especially with the lack of any sort of communication about it. He’d asked if I wanted to be fisted before doing it, so why was this different?

I flashed back to a conversation we had earlier at the bar. When we were discussing his sex educator ex, he told me that she was a big proponent of consent and her habit of always asking before doing anything had rubbed off on him. He had asked if he could kiss me, but I just remembered he didn’t ask when he initially pulled me close and put his arms around me. Regardless, I had told him he didn’t need to ask permission for every little engagement. I wondered if that caused him to just penetrate and ask questions later.

I was probably too drunk and therefore not courageous enough to say something at the moment, as I struggle with standing up for myself or setting boundaries. So things continued and soon enough we were heading in the direction of intercourse.

“Do you have condoms?” I asked, wanting to make it clear we needed use protection. “Yes, I do, in the kitchen.” I thought this odd. Who keeps their condoms in the kitchen? That seems a rather inconvenient spot for them, as evidenced by this moment.

“Well, will you go and get them?” I asked. He didn’t move but said he would.

When?!

I kept persistently asking as we engaged in foreplay. He didn’t seem in a rush to get them and I wondered if that was the purpose of keeping them in the kitchen; to make it easier to fuck without them.

Regardless, I wasn’t going to relent. If we were going to have intercourse, there was going to be a condom involved.

Eventually, he got out of bed to retrieve the condoms. I went over to my phone and sent a text to Mike, which read:

Lol, in hooking up with someone

And all I can think abkht is you

Im deubk

Clearly, I was pretty sloshed.

When he came back, he had the entire box with him and handed it to me. I was expecting him to just bring back a couple, but I took the box and set it on the window sill behind his bed, removing two that I stuck under the adjacent pillow for easy access.

I straddled him as we got back to making out, which soon lead to me slipping a condom on and sliding him inside of me.

Looking back, I wonder why I was the only one seemingly interacting with the condoms. It seems rather strange to me that he took so long to get them, only to hand me the box and let me do as I please. Most men I’ve slept with put on their own condoms, which I think is the appropriate thing to do. Also just for protection's sake, it’s easier to tell if it’s on correctly if you’re the one who is wearing it.

After about 30 seconds of thrusting my hips, he was hit with whiskey dick.

We both laughed and he said something to the effect of “I told you so,” since he had warned me so many times that he was probably not going to make it to the finish line. He actually took off the condom and I decided to bring up the anal incident.

“You know how you fingered my ass earlier?” He didn’t seem to have much recollection.

“Wait- I did that?” He said with embarrassment in his voice.

“Yeah…You did.” I said, flipping my hair out of my face.

Jack nervously laughed. “I’m sorry….oh my god. I can’t believe I did that.”

“It’s alright. I thought I should talk to you though since, you know…” I figured he must have accidentally gone into that hole and hadn’t realized it. Or he was just embarrassed by me bringing this to his attention and was regretting having done it in the first place. Either way, I found this to be an acceptable response and we moved on.

I was laying on top of him and felt a longing to be fucked. “Do you want to finger me again?” I asked.

I could feel him smile. “Just ask me, if that’s what you want.”

I realized I had phrased my request in a passive way because of how hard it is for me to ask for what I want. “Can you finger me again?”

“Absolutely,” Jack flipped me over and I placed one of my legs over his shoulder.

He thrust fast and hard, filling me with pleasure. I moaned in tandem with his thrusts and wrapped my body tightly around him and he held me close with his left arm.

This went on for about 10 minutes and I could sense he was going to pull his hand out as I laid breathless, basking in pleasure.

I felt him in my ass.

Again.

He thrust his fingers in and out a few times and then pulled out, completely silent.

I was in shock and everything around me slowed down; it was as if someone had pressed a slow-motion button. I felt like I couldn’t move.

He just laid there, motionless. I could sense that he was waiting for a reaction from me.

I retreated into the depths of my mind. I saw the last few minutes play out as I began to intellectually understand the magnitude that had caused my body's visceral reaction.

I had expressed that I didn’t want to be anally penetrated, yet he did it again. He did it anyway, knowing I didn’t like it want it.

Oh my god.

This was sexual assault.

I felt tears start to stream down my face as I cried uncontrollably. I hate to show emotion like this in front of others and felt uncomfortable with this display of vulnerability. Jack didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, was ignoring the display of emotion.

That was why I felt that familiar freeze response, the slowing down of time and space, the pain of violation. I was familiar with the darkness. It made sense.

I wiggled out from underneath Jack and went to the bathroom to collect myself. I turned on the light and looked at the reflection in the mirror. I saw raw pain staring back at me.

I took a few deep breaths and walked the long, narrow hallway back into the bedroom.

I found him sitting on the bed, completely silent.

“Do you want to talk about what the fuck just happened? What you did to me?” I asked incredulously.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with complete stoicism.

I was shocked by his lack of care or concern in the situation. He didn’t ask me what was wrong, why I had leaped out of bed with tears running down my face, why I was hurt. He had a complete lack of empathy.

I was shaken. “What do you mean? I told you not to finger my ass and then you did it again.”

He continued to avoid looking at me as he sat on the bed. “I don’t remember anything. All I know is that we were fucking and then you were upset.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Are you serious?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I don’t recall that happening. I don’t remember anything else other than what I told you.”

Jack was really trying to act like he just conveniently didn’t remember the last 15 minutes, but of course, he could recall everything before that, since he knew we’d fucked.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re lying!” I threw my hands up in frustration. “You are sitting here lying to me.” I shook my head as I crossed my arms over my breasts. “We both know what happened, Jack.”

He just sat there in silence.

“I said I didn’t want to be fingered in the ass and you did it again. You sexually assaulted me.”

He said nothing but started to hand me my clothes. I put them on as I thought about what my options were. I could call the police, but that wouldn’t do me any good since this was he said/she said ordeal since we had engaged in consensual sex. There was my version of events and his. I’d also told him information over drinks that he could use to discredit me enough that the police would not touch this investigation with a ten-foot pole. I was furious, knowing that I had no other choice but to leave. I wondered if he knew that and had factored it into his calculation to violate me.

He pulled out his phone and shoved it in my direction, with the Lyft app open. “I’m not going to give you my address,” I waved the phone away from me.

However, I realized that with my finances being as tumultuous as they were, I probably needed to take the free ride. God knew what the surge prices were at that time of night.

“Alright, fine.” I took the phone from his hand and typed in my address. He didn’t look, but I knew he would get the receipt emailed to him that would have the destination address on it, so it didn’t matter if he looked now or not, he would have my address regardless.

I grabbed my purse and walked towards the front door. He didn’t follow me, but after undoing the locks I noticed he had come up behind me.

I exited and he gave me a silent salute before slamming the door and locking all three of its locks.

I speechlessly descended down the stairs and got into the car.

“What’s the name on the account?” The driver asked. I realized he probably saw that I was different than the man in the profile picture he’d been expecting to pick up.

M mind was racing and my heart beating so fast that I actually had to think for a second about what the guy’s name was who I had just been with. “Jack.” I mustered.

He nodded and wordlessly started to drive.

I put my AirPods in and started to blast Omarion and in my ears, to drown out the noise of my thoughts.

I had texted Mike and told him it was an emergency and that I really needed to talk to him. I tried calling but it went voicemail. He must have been asleep. Fuck.

I then texted another man named Micheal who I’d stayed up all night the previous night talking on the phone to, to see if he was still awake. He replied instantly that he was and told him I really needed to call when I got home. He seemed to pick up on the nature of the situation and told me to call whenever he would be there.

Once we pulled up to my apartment in Bushwick, I immediately dialed and talked to him as I was flooded with emotion. I was shaking, panting, and felt lightheaded. I stood in front of my A/C unit for 20 minutes to calm down.

I’m really glad that he was there to support me. It was a very difficult night and I was so wired that I couldn’t go to sleep until 6 am.

I spent much of my time on the phone with Micheal asking for his validation that what happened was really sexual assault. That I could call it rape since technically consensual anal penetration is legally classified as rape. He didn’t seem to have a clear answer, which frustrated me.

The following day, I did talk to the previously mentioned Mike. He is becoming a therapist and has a very firm grasp on these kinds of concepts, so I was hoping to get the validation I craved from him.

“It doesn’t really matter what terminology you use, since you’re not pursuing any kind of legal recourse. Like, that’s what those definitions are created for in the first place. What really matters are your feelings about it.; your experience of the situation. Ultimately, your opinion is the one that matters.”

I saw the wisdom in his words instantly. “I do always look for validation from men and for someone to tell me that I’m right, that I’m not crazy, because of the gaslighting in my childhood. I don’t view myself as a credible source. So I look for men to tell me that I’m not insane, that my point of view is correct. But, you’re totally right. I was the only one who was there, the only primary source, and no one can tell me what my experience of a situation is except for me. They can only go off of what I tell them.”

This realization caused me to reflect more deeply. I felt a tremendous sense of uncertainty over how I’d set the boundary around ass play since I hadn’t said outright “Do not do that again.” It caused me to feel that perhaps I wasn’t firm enough, that maybe I was actually interpreting the situation incorrectly.

Even if I wasn’t as firm as I should have been or would like to be in the future, the sentiment was still there. He had even said he didn’t remember doing it the first time, which I see as a set-up to do it, or other sexual acts I wasn’t okay with. It was really convenient how his memory wasn’t encoding any of that behavior but remembered getting a condom and fucking. I also know that’s not how blacking out works, especially in real-time. He wasn’t even that wasted; he’d had one more drink than me and was probably 100lbs bigger. There’s no way he could have been anywhere near the BAC that I had been at.

I made the determination that this was rape. It was wrong. It was an assault, a violation.

Rape doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is often in these gray areas, these boundary violations, a lack of respect for another, that these egregious acts take place. They can live side-by-side with consensual sex, which makes them hard to digest. The lines are so close together, yet so far apart.

I share this story to hopefully show you how rape can happen to anyone, how you can misjudge someone’s intentions and get yourself into a bad situation. How you can be taken advantage of after a fun night at a bar. How sex can be consensual and then not. How your humanity can so easily be taken from you.

I have been doing better than I have in the aftermath of other sexual assaults since I believe I was able to stand up for myself, process the situation in real-time, get immediate support, and know that it wasn’t my fault. However, no healing journey is right or wrong, better or worse, and the most important thing is to hold space for yourself. To let yourself be in pain.

I have engaged in binge eating again, which is something I developed as a coping mechanism when I was experiencing incest as a child, while simultaneously being severely bullied at school. The pain was too much to bear and I needed an outlet: enter food. In high school, I was binge eating almost daily, until I sought help in college for my eating disorder.

Unacknowledged trauma comes out in ugly ways like this and maladaptive coping can make it that much harder to heal, since you now have not just one would you need to address, but two. Or maybe even more. Trust me, I’ve been there and I am very much still in the thick of dealing with the past.

I’ve said before that I almost wish someone would have just taken out a gun and had their way with me, that way I could explain being raped, no one would question if it was real, and best of all, I wouldn’t have to question myself.

When Governor Abbot talks about rapists being taken off the streets and locked away from society, he has no idea what he’s talking about. He doesn’t understand that most sexual assault and rape happens in this kind of gray area. He doesn’t know what it’s like to tell someone no and have them completely disregard your boundary. He’s never been liquored up and lied to. He’s never been forced to stay quiet because your assailant knows too much about your past and your mental health to come forward. He doesn’t know what it’s like to live with the shame that sexual assault casts over you. He doesn’t know what it’s like to live with sexual trauma. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have your whole life fall apart because of how sexual violence has touched every area of your life. To lose your family over it. To lose opportunities. To not be able to do your job.

He doesn’t know what it’s like to be raped, yet has the audacity to limit the options for victims who become pregnant as a result of their violation.

I share this story to change the narrative around sexual assault. To show men in power like Gov. Abbott how little they understand about this subject.

I hope this vulnerability will do some good.